Three cups of coffee a day makes breasts shrink - study

DRINKING just three cups of coffee a day can make women's breasts shrink, researchers say.

• Coffee drinking can make breasts shrink, study says
• Three cups a day enough to trigger effect
• Breasts shrinkage can increase of every extra cup

Nearly 300 women were surveyed about their bust measurements and how many cups of coffee they drank in an average day.

According to the Swedish researchers, three cups a day was enough to start making breasts shrink, with the effects increasing for every cup drunk.

They said there was a clear link between drinking coffee and smaller breasts, as about half of women possessed a gene shown to link breast size to coffee intake.

"Drinking coffee can have a major effect on breast size," said Helena Jernstroem, a lecturer in experimental oncology at Lund University in Sweden.

"Coffee-drinking women do not have to worry their breasts will shrink to nothing overnight. They will get smaller, but the breasts aren't just going to disappear.

"However, anyone who thinks they can tell which women are coffee drinkers just from their bra measurements will be disappointed. The problem is that there are two measures for a bra - the cup size and the girth - so you wouldn't be able to tell."

It was not all bad news for women, as the researchers also found that regular hits of caffeine could help to cut the risk of breast cancer.